At least one picture of or referrence to Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon is required in any discussion about Progressive Rock music.

Progressive Rock is known for—among other things—its complexity, its difficulty in performing, and the talent and virtuosity of its associated musicians. And you, the average Prog fan, feel discouraged from making a foray into writing and recording Progmusic of your own for—among other things—your utter lack of those three things.

Contents

Important Prerequisites

Before you take a swing at writing your very own Prog, however, there are certain criteria you must meet. If you fail to meet one or more of these, it is recommended that you avoid writing Progressive Rock at all costs.

A Massive Intellect

If your IQ is under 130, or if you are unable to pretend that your IQ is not under 130, you should not even attempt writing Prog Rock. Progressive Rock is—to put it bluntly—for smart people. If you are not one of these smart people, you simply cannot make Progressive Rock music.

If you want to be taken seriously at all, do not mention Spock's Beard in a discussion about Prog Rock, for they are American.

Who Cares About America?

As anyone who knows anything about anything will tell you, Americans can't make Prog Rock. With the exception of select works by Dream Theater and The Mars Volta, everything to that has come out of the American Prog scene is decidedly not brilliant.

Other Useful Things

Being able to play an instrument helps. Also, some musical training, an inclination to write Prog music, and eyes.

Step One: Selecting Subject Matter

Now that you're absolutely sure you're qualified to write your very own Prog masterpiece, it is time to determine just what your song will be about. There are a number of methods you can use to do this.

The Opposite Method

One of the most popular methods is called the “Opposite Method.” In the Opposite Method, you simply think of something a typical Rock song would be about, take the opposite of whatever that “something” is, and write a song about that opposite of that “something.”

If you're talking about Progressive Rock and want to sound smarter and more sophisticated than the person you're talking to, it is recommended you referrence King Crimson and/or their first album at least once.

Boring, pretentious things that are interesting to no one (every song by King Crimson ever)

The Opposite Method is used extensively by bands like Pink Floyd and King Crimson—although the practice is certainly not limited to these groups—and is considered one of the most effective and sure-fire ways to come up with an effective concept for a Prog Rock song.

The Critique Method

If you're discussing albums that critique things, mentioning the Pink Floyd album Animals is typically considered appropriate.

The “Critique Method” is another extremely effective method for coming up with Prog Rock subject matter. In this method, simply choose an aspect of contemporary society and critique it using broad, vague, typically artistic and altruistic points. Remember: the vaguer, broader, artisticer and altruisticer the better. Popular subjects of the Critique Method include (but are not limited to):

The benefit of critique songs is that they are typically thought of as being socially pertinent, and are therefore highly esteemed.

The Concept Method

This method only works if you’ve decided to write a concept album, and so for our purposes will not be discussed in-depth. For the “Concept Method,” pick one episode that fits into a larger story (the “concept” of your album) and write about it. It should be noted that this method only works if it is in fact a concept album you’re writing.

The Random Imagery Method

The “Random Imagery” method is at once the easiest and most difficult method to determining Progressive Rock subject matter. To master this method, you need only to write a series of vaguely related, cryptic lyrics that give a sense of a larger—typically trippy—whole. This method was used extensively by early (you guessed it!) Pink Floyd, as well as Genesis and Yes, although it fell out of favor for quite some time. However, with the rising popularity of bands like (OK, only) The Mars Volta, this method has been making a comeback.

Step Two: Writing the Lyrics

Once you’ve selected your concept and/or subject matter, it is time to write your lyrics. In a standard Rock song, this would be a fairly simple affair, and would follow a typical verse/chorus pattern or variant thereof. However, such a simplistic practice is highly discouraged with Progressive music, and should be avoided at all costs.

Song Structure, etc.

Instead of the typical verse/chorus lyrical structure, it is better that you use a structure that follows no discernable pattern—outside the context of the song, at least—at all.

It is best to use at least three—although four to five is typically encouraged—completely different verse structures, with completely different rhyme schemes, all of which are metered completely differently. Ideally, at least one of these won’t be sung, but spoken in prose in the middle of a lengthy instrumental interlude at a barely audible volume just beneath the guitar riff. If said spoken prose part is a pre-recorded soundbite of a notable person (perhaps one you are criticizing, see “Critique Method”) or dialog from one of the characters in the story of your concept album (see “Concept Method”), this technique works even better.

Another popular method is to have your song go through various “acts,” with each verse or set of verses conveying a different “feel” appropriate to the subject matter or story action. If someone dares ask you “why not just make them into separate songs, if they’re so different?” completely ignore their question, because breaking up your lengthy song into shorter ones would not at all be Progressive.

Utilizing these and other Prog techniques will give your song a sense of “complete differentness” and will make it sound “brainy” and “sophisticated,” which will in term lead to massive critical acclaim.

Vocabulary

This aspect is fairly straightforward in that it can reduced to one, simple tidbit of advice: the bigger the words, the better. Although making your song incomprehensible is generally a bad thing (though the members of King Crimson would probably disagree), it is always good to “push the envelope.”

In addition, it is typically a good thing to rhyme words that are longer than one syllable long, something that—in the realms of standard Rock and Rap music—is notoriously hard to do.

Step Three: Writing the Music

Once you’ve got your lyrics written out, you've of course got to set them to music. Although this may seem like the most difficult aspect to do given the reputation of Progressive music, it is in fact very simple so long as one keeps the following conventions in mind.

Destroying the Barriers of Genre

Destroying genre “conventions” or “barriers” is arguably one of the most important aspects to writing good Prog music. Although this concept may seem extremely complicated to the average person, it is in fact very easy as what it really means is “add elements of another genre to a Rock song.”

Although this rather broad distillation may give the impression you have limitless room in which to work, it is actually recommended that you limit yourself to one of the following genres with which to destroy the conventions of genre:

Working with any genre outside these few, pre-prescribed ones will result in utter failure, as your song will not be Progressive.

Instrumentation

Referring to Camel gives you cred with all 38 of the band's avid fans.

Although most of your music will be played on standard, run-of-the-mill Rock instruments like the guitar, bass, and drums, it is highly recommended that you include at least a fourth, fifth, or twelfth instrument to “spice things up.” This additional instrument will almost invariably be a saxophone and/or keyboard/synthesizer, although if you’re feeling exotic feel free to try something along the lines of a mellotron, cello, flute, or even an extra guitar. You could even go the route of an entire orchestra. Remember: the more instruments, the better.

Solos

Although instrumentation is extremely important, all those extra, exotic instruments will be meaningless if they are not given at least one solo in the course of your song. The suggested number of solos per song hangs at about two to three (one of which must, must, be a guitar solo), although the instrumentation rule applies here in that the more solos your song has, the better. Some bands—most notably Camel—take this notion to heart, and write music that consists almost entirely of various instrumental solos linked to other instrumental solos by less important instrumental solos.

In addition, your solos must follow certain conventions in order to truly be considered Progressive. Ideally, they will show off the musicianship of the person playing the instrument, have at least one section of really fast chromatic scales, have at least one section of really long, droning, “spacey” notes, and make up at least 35-40% of the entire song.

Instrumental Interludes

In addition to large numbers of solo sections, a good progressive rock song should also include—at the very least—two entirely instrumental sections. These create opportunities for progressive rock musicians to not only show off their superior musicianship, but also their clearly superior songwriting abilities. They can convey ideas and events in ways that cannot be achieved through conventional approaches such as lyrics. This is particularly useful in concept or "story" songs. Instrumental sections also add much needed length to a song and are especially advisable in the writing of the iconic epic.

To write a good interlude a band will often take a simple riff that a member has come up with and will proceed to make a very complex song section out of it. This often involves the layering of many parts over it and perhaps the modification of the riff to make it fit a more unconventional time signature (the weirder the better, but this will not be discussed in this article). When writing twenty minute (or longer) epics interludes are sometimes repeated and varied. To get an idea of how to write good interludes and variations, listen to Yes.

Step Four: Recording the Song

Once you’ve written out your music, you’ve nothing left to do but record it. This is where everything “comes together,” so to speak.

While in the studio, over-utilizing whatever technology is available to you (typically stereo sound, although don’t limit yourself) is extremely important. Once that’s been done, add at least one or two random sound effects—ambient electronic noises, barking dogs, cars driving, children crying, etc.—to your song for effect. Finally, you’ve finished, and your Prog song is completed.

An Example

Making referrence to PorcupineTree gives you cred with the younger generation of Prog fans.